Spontaneous Combustion Quotes

If I had my way," Dionysus said, "I would cause your molecules to erupt in flames. We'd sweep up the ashes and be done with a lot of trouble. But Chiron seems to feel this would be against my mission at this cursed camp: to keep you little brats safe from harm."
"Spontaneous combustion is a form of harm, Mr. D," Chiron put in.
"Nonsense," Dionysus said. "Boy wouldn't feel a thing. Nevertheless, I've agreed to restrain myself. I'm thinking of turning you into a dolphin instead, sending you back to your father. ~ Rick Riordan

I believed in immaculate conception and spontaneous combustion. I believed in aliens from outer space and vampires, prophecy, and the resurrection of the dead. I had deja vu many times each day. I was thirteen. ~ Kate Braverman

What is chemistry in a relationship, Really? Chemistry can be spontaneous combustion that excites, incites, often harms. But not understood. Chemistry can also be that which is studied, intentional, and knows how to be repeated and improved upon. Do you have the right chemistry? ~ Lucille Anderson

I fell into writing, I suppose, being one of those awful children who wrote verses. I went to a convent in New York-the Blessed Sacrament ... I was fired from there, finally, for a lot of things, among them my insistence that the Immaculate Conception was spontaneous combustion. ~ Dorothy Parker

Spontaneous combustion IS a form of harm, Mr. D, Chiron put in. ~ Rick Riordan

Andrus turned the engine and gave her a suspicious look. "You smell like ... " He shifted into drive. "What?" "Nothing, but - did something happen inside?" Could he really smell ... that? He crinkled his nose. "Your face is red and your scent is ... " Oh, God. He can! Kill me now! Giant bomb, falling tree, spontaneous combustion ... anything! ~ Mimi Jean Pamfiloff

Vampires, contrary to popular belief, don't incinerate when exposed to sunlight. If that were true, there would be a heck of a lot more stories about spontaneous combustion around the world. They are, however, very sensitive to sunlight and their skin cannot take long term exposure without damaging and burning it, which was painful. From Vampire Princess Rising book two of the Winters Saga ~ Jami Brumfield

I'm still going to move them out of my wanigan, but I'll give you odds two-to-one that after they move out there's going to be spontaneous combustion. ~ Tom Kizzia

What the cold light showed me was that my situation was simply unlivable. I wanted, with a desire greater than any desire which I had ever conceived could exist without instantly killing its owner by spontaneous combustion, something which I simply could not have. ~ Iris Murdoch

Jimmy Finn was not burned in the calaboose, but died a natural death in a tan vat, of a combination of delirium tremens and spontaneous combustion. When I say natural death, I mean it was a natural death for Jimmy Finn. ~ Mark Twain

Like a lot of what happens in novels, inspiration is
a sort of spontaneous combustion
the oily rags of the head and heart. ~ Stanley Elkin

He leaves less than a foot of space between us and I'm 10 inches away from spontaneous combustion. ~ Tahereh Mafi

Success is not due to spontaneous combustion. You have to set yourself on fire. ~ Various Attributed Sources

I started getting really curious about art. I read about the Dadaists and the Futurists and the Constructivists - those kind of movements which were reflecting the angst of the people of their times. Their work was trying to lead a movement. I began thinking about what was happening, with painting on the streets and painting on the trains as being similar but also coming from a real, pure space. It wasn't being created by academies. It was a spontaneous combustion of ideas that just happened. ~ Jeffrey Deitch

Arson is a respected profession among certain subcultures in Jersey, and the good ones don't get caught. The good ones channel lightning and mysterious acts of spontaneous combustion. ~ Janet Evanovich

Fulfilling the four needs [spiritual, mental, physical, social] in an integrated way is like combining elements in chemistry. When we reach a "critical mass" of integration, we experience spontaneous combustion-an explosion of inner synergy that ignites the fire within and gives vision, passion, and a spirit of adventure to life. ~ Stephen Covey

Let us not underestimate how hard it is to be compassionate. Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken. But this is not our spontaneous response to suffering. What we desire most is to do away with suffering by fleeing from it or finding a quick cure for it. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

Like everything else he did perfectly, Ronin was a perfect travel partner. Knowledgeable. Attentive. Flexible. Spontaneous. Passionate. ~ Lorelei James

When you serve the humanity with compassion and kindness,
You express your spontaneous love and inner greatness. ~ Debasish Mridha

On the social front it was a question of Amistics, which was a term that had been coined ages ago by a Moiran anthropologist to talk about the choices that different cultures made as to which technologies they would, and would not, make part of their lives. The word went all the way back to the Amish people of pre-Zero America, who had chosen to use certain modern technologies, such as roller skates, but not others, such as internal combustion engines. All cultures ~ Neal Stephenson

If my body had this kind of response now, what would have happened if he'd actually done more? Spontaneous impregnation? ~ Penelope Ward

I had to drive through a very poor and largely Hispanic section of Miami to get to the apartment complex where Casey Martin had died. There were a lot of beautiful women on the sidewalks and at the outdoor cafés, a lot of tough guys and a lot of guys who weren't tough but trying to look like they were. The streets were alive with what criminally passed for music nowadays, and there were smells of cooking in the air that suggested savory tastes. Small, hole-in-the-wall shops marked one end, and some more upscale stores the other. The dividing line between the two was discernible not just by the stores, but the women.

The women and even younger girls at the lower income end seemed softer, friendlier, quicker with a genuine smile. The ones walking into the trendy places were just as pretty, more expensively dressed, but more apt to express scorn than produce a spontaneous smile. The upscale women appeared to be from a different planet. For them, everything was sexist, everything a slight. They were eternal victims, even though the entire world was in their favor. The women at the poor end fell in love, watched out for their men, while the more affluent were stand-offish and demanding, making certain any man "lucky" enough to be with them lived in the right zip code, had the right amount of bling to give them, and above all, had been properly neutered. The balls of their boyfriends and husbands - sometimes they had both - were always in their handbag, somewhere bet ~ Bobby Underwood

I suddenly recall the arpeggios of laughter lilting across the tender, springtime grass-gay-welling, far-floating, fluent, spontaneous, a bell-like feminine fluting, then suppressed; as though snuffed swiftly and irrevocably beneath the quiet solemnity of the vespered air now vibrant with somber chapel bells. ~ Ralph Ellison

So far, she'd been her usual lame self: solitary and routine-loving, carefully avoiding any path that might lead to spontaneous human interaction.
Lena Kaligaris ~ Ann Brashares

I love the dynamic contrast between the spontaneous shots and the more formal, pro-rock-star photos. ~ Bruce Pavitt

There was a study done in the early 20th century of all the entrepreneurs who entered the automobile industry around the same time as Henry Ford; there were something like 500 automotive companies that got funded, had the internal combustion engine, had the technology, and had the vision. Sixty percent of them folded within a couple of years. ~ Eric Ries

Fear is like the steam that fires the combustion engine. You need fear to get a performance going. ~ Rachel Weisz

The sophisticated concern about art sinks before a spontaneous love of reality, and I thank the photograph for being so transparent a vehicle for things ... ~ George Santayana

We are not going to move this world by criticism of it nor conformity to it, but by the combustion within it of lives ignited by the Spirit of God. ~ Vance Havner

Idealism and naiveté were youthful cousins. Foresight and the considerations of age and experience often brought inaction, compromise, second-guessing; the ability to foresee the extent of actions--to understand implications of cause and effect--could effectively thwart spontaneous, if impractical, decisions. ~ Brent Hayward

'WHEN two lovers are making love, and if they are both no-selves, nothingness, then a spontaneous pleasurable sensation happens. Then their body energy, their whole being, loses all identity; they are no more themselves - they have fallen into abyss. But this can happen only for a moment: again they regain, again they start clinging. That's why people become afraid in love.' ~ Rajneesh

When ordinary Soviet citizens are told that a vital trade agreement awarding their country most-favoured-nation status with the US is being blocked in Congress because Soviet Jews are demanding as an absolute right something few other inhabitants can expect as a special privilege - then the result is likely to be spontaneous outbreaks of anti-Semitism. ~ Alan Brien

The outgoing and spontaneous person that the world knew while I was boxing was a persona that I created to sell tickets and promote my career. In my private life, I am quiet and reflective by nature. ~ Muhammad Ali

I like to do the pictures before people get too self-conscious. I like to be spontaneous and get a shot before the subject thinks too much about it. ~ Keira Knightley

Find Eloy. Smack his head into a wall, dance on his guts ... I'd get creative. Spontaneous like. ~ Kim Harrison

What if I am, in some way, only a sophisticated fire that has acquired an ability to regulate its rate of combustion and to hoard its fuel in order to see and walk? ~ Loren Eiseley

This scene came from the writing I did with Bill in New York, working out of an office in the Director's Guild building. I generally came in early and worked for a couple of hours before Bill arrived. He would then spend about an hour puttering around the office and smoking cheroots, then would eventually settle in next to me at the desk, read what I had written, and begin offering suggestions and improvements. Sometimes I would print out a scene and then mark it up - as with the scene above - as Bill tried out Phil's dialogue, and we tweaked lines accordingly. Our afternoons were often spent walking around New York running Bill's errands while talking about general script issues. He was a warm and wonderful host to me during my New York visit. There was an afternoon where he and Tom Davis paired up against me and Dan Aykroyd in a spontaneous basketball game, the four of us sneakerless and slipping around in our socks. I made my bones with Bill that day when he hurled a basketball at my head and I managed to duck. "Good reflexes," he said. I think of these two weeks with Bill as one of the more surreal and memorable experiences of my writer's life. ~ Danny Rubin

I always work only with friends, but it must be about them and myself. Because I film only very personal moments, nothing preplanned, staged or written, it has to be real and spontaneous. Some of them have become famous, some are not yet famous, some will never be famous. But they are all my friends. ~ Jonas Mekas

What I fear and desire most in this world is passion. I fear it because it promises to be spontaneous, out of my control, unnamed, beyond my reasonable self. I desire it because passion has color, like the landscape before me. It is not pale. It is not neutral. It reveals the backside of the heart. ~ Terry Tempest Williams

The greatest triumph of our educational method should always be this: to bring about the spontaneous progress of the child. ~ Maria Montessori

The real dance is a spontaneous body movement that in harmony with the beats of the music in your heart. ~ Toba Beta

So I stood up and did a handstand on my Guru's roof, to celebrate the notion of liberation. I felt the dusty tiles under my hands. I felt my own strength and balance. I felt the easy night breeze on the palms of my bare feet. This kind of thing
a spontaneous handstand
isn't something a disembodied cool blue soul can do, but a human being can do it. We have hands; we can stand on them if we want to. That's our privilege. That's the joy of a mortal body. And that's why God needs us. Because God loves to feel things through our hands. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

Since I was from the theater, that's how I learned how to go through the process of being a character. That's how I learned, and that's what I was comfortable doing. And then, the first feature films, I'm sure I was no fun because I did not want to be spontaneous in that filmic way that really can work for you. ~ Campbell Scott

The key to spontaneous wit is an unburdened mind. ~ Darwin Ortiz

Life and love generate effort, but effort will not generate them. Faith-in life, in other people, and in oneself-is the attitude of allowing the spontaneous to be spontaneous, in its own way and in its own time. ~ Alan Watts

Spontaneous prayer, sincerely expressed, may be a very important way to speak to the Lord. However, the prayers that we have received from the Church are important ways of teaching us how to pray in theologically correct ways and may even be superior if our spontaneous prayers express untrue notions of God or our relationship to him. ~ Mitch Pacwa

Life is a very sad piece of buffoonery, because we have .. the need to fool ourselves continuously by the spontaneous creation of a reality .. which, from time to time, reveals itself to be vain and illusory. ~ Luigi Pirandello

He has always rated Anne highly as a strategist. He has never believed in her as a passionate, spontaneous woman. Everything she does is calculated, like everything he does. ~ Hilary Mantel

The existence of God is a matter of feeling! It is not a formula of algebra that we sit down and prove! If we carefully observe the humans, animals, nature etc., then the existence of God can certainly be felt. Say, I mentioned in one of my Facebook posts that the 4 fingers of our hands are located side by side but one finger, that is, the thumb is much away from other fingers, structurally small and much different compared to other fingers. Now, it would be foolishness to say that the location of the thumb is such by coincidence. God knows it well that if all the fingers in the hands were of same size and structure, then it would be rather difficult or impossible for us to hold anything or do any work! So, He placed the thumb of our hands in the distance. It would be clearer if I explain it in a different way. As the parents become exceedingly cautious about the newly born baby, its spontaneous feeding, walking, talking etc. are carefully monitored by them, likewise, God has given the specific formation, shape and structure to the humans and all the animals by keeping their overall well-being, advantages and easiness in mind! ~ Md. Ziaul Haque

The idea of gas engines was by no means new, but this was the first time that a really serious effort had been made to put them on the market. They were received with interest rather than enthusiasm and I do not recall any one who thought that the internal combustion engine could ever have more than a limited use. All the wise people demonstrated conclusively that the engine could not compete with steam. They never thought that it might carve out a career for itself. That is the way with wise people
they are so wise and practical that they always know to a dot just why something cannot be done; they always know the limitations. That is why I never employ an expert in full bloom. If ever I wanted to kill opposition by unfair means I would endow the opposition with experts. They would have so much good advice that I could be sure they would do little work. ~ Henry Ford

Maya's character was different. Although she was beautiful and stood out of the crowd, she was a very shy person. The siblings got along quite well, but in many ways they were absolutely opposites. Maya was always hesitant and thought before she started anything new and Joey was very spontaneous. He acted before he thought about consequences and so they disagreed often and it took them always a while to agree on something. ~ Gloria Tesch

I believe in the writer's mission. He receives it from the word, which carries its suffering and its hope within it. He questions the words, which question him. He accompanies the words, which accompany him. The initiative is shared, as if spontaneous. ~ Edmond Jabes